LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA.- The Japanese American National Museum presents “Finding Family Stories.” Finding Family Stories, a three-year arts partnership project that brings together cultural institutions representing Southern California’s diverse communities, will highlight the works of eight emerging and established local artists working in a variety of media, including photography, sculpture, video and painting, at four sites beginning on Saturday, March 15, 2003, at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo, followed by openings at the other three organizations.
Organized by the National Museum in part through a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Weingart Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council, Finding Family Stories is a multi-year collaboration involving the California African American Museum, the Chinese American Museum, Japanese American National Museum and Self-Help Graphics & Art. One goal is the development of an art exhibition at all four sites with each artist exploring the themes of family, individual identity, community and cultural diversity. An equally important goal is the development of stronger ties between existing art/history/cultural institutions in Los Angeles County and their communities.
The Japanese American National Museum exhibition will run from March 15 to July 6, 2003. The Chinese American Museum will open its exhibition at the El Pueblo Community Gallery (at E-13 between Olvera Street and Alameda Street) on March 16 and run through April 12. On April 3, Self-Help Graphics & Art will unveil their part of the exhibition, which will run through April 20. On April 5, the California African American Museum will open the doors to their section of the exhibition, which runs through July 19.
The partnering organizations worked together to select eight local established and emerging artists for the culminating exhibition composed of their new and existing art, reflecting the common theme of family. All four partners will display at least one work from each of the artists.
Selected in an open call for artists by the four partners were Sandra de la Loza, Teresa Hagiya, Patrick "Pato" Hebert, Betty Lee, Michael Massenburg, Dominique Moody, Jose B. Ramirez and Steven Yao-Chee Wong. The institutions essentially commissioned the artists to create new work for Finding Family Stories and then make available existing works so all eight artists are represented at all four venues. Each work connects in some fashion to the theme of family.
Observed Roberto Bedoya, former executive director of the National Association of Artists’ Organizations (NAAO), "Finding Family Stories is about the ’we’ of Southern California that escapes finessing but grows in multiplicity and possibilities. It is a ’we’ that holds questions, such as: How many languages are spoken in the Los Angeles Unified School District? How is my family like your family? How is it different?
"The sharing in Finding Family Stories is not a sharing that is linked to sentimentality that reduces the complexity of being human to a Disney version of ’we are all brothers and sisters,’ and ’under our skin we are all the same,’ or an advertisement slogan that states ’no color lines.’ Happy-face reductionism is not what Finding Family Stories is about; rather, it is about exploring our complexity as humans, the complexity of diverse cultural values and traditions."
Artists Massenburg and Moody both looked at their own families to gain inspiration for the exhibition. Massenburg spoke to his many relatives and turned to books on African American history before creating In Time, Melissa Letter and Circle of Cousins, painted, collaged images that tell his complex family history.
Moody, who has sought the whereabouts of her absent father, reflects her family’s saga in four new works created with found objects, collaged photographs and life-sized figures of family members.
Ramirez, an inner-city elementary school teacher, painter and muralist, explores the connections between family and community. He strongly believes in teaching respect for differences and social responsibility, all which is reflected in his new series of paintings entitled Fly, which celebrates family and community solidarity. He was inspired by the book, The People Could Fly, based on an African American folktale set in the American South.
Utilizing her parents’ Polaroid family snapshots from the 1950s and 1960s, de la Loza looks at the nature of staged family portraits in her installations, which suggest how much photographs conceal as much as they reveal. In a new audio-based installation, de la Loza reveals a sense of family found in the home, on the street and within the city.
Lee’s new work is a deeper exploration of her semi-autobiographical Laundry Series. Mining her childhood experience of growing up in a small, isolated midwestern town without other Asian Americans, Lee developed her self-awareness in the back rooms of her parents’ laundry business. All four venues will exhibit items from this series including photographs, video installation and net-based project.
In hay una vieja que esta enamorada, Hebert looks to his family’s past in Panama. Using lenticular technology to layer multiple photographic images, Hebert juxtaposes pictures of his family next to landscapes images that reference Panama’s colonial history.
Wong’s work examines Los Angeles’ Chinatown in Chinatown Stories: Realizing the Imagined. Through found objects including vintage postcards, Wong brings out prevailing stereotypes of Chinatown and Chinese people, often fanned by tourist culture and Hollywood myths. Wong contrasts this imagery with actual experiences of Chinatown residents and raises the complexity of identity.
Hagiya’s new installation Retroreflective utilizes the trappings of road safety signs such as those that appear in main thoroughfares and rural roads. Road safety signs help guide motorists through our highways, but the fact that we never question their validity is a point provocatively employed by Hagiya. Are such signs really for our safety? Where do we draw the line between safety and being controlled and manipulated against our will?